Friday, May 25, 2012

Last night I reread the previous thing I put up here, "Stuff Part 2." And I realized that what I wrote could be taken two ways. In one sense it's about a guy trying to throw away stuff that he's accumulated in a storage unit. But it could also be taken metaphorically.

I'm kind of dumb that way. When I read the Bhagavad Gita a long time ago, I thought it was a story about God coming down and helping a guy in a battle. Someone had to tell me that the five horses of Krishna's chariot represent the five senses, that Krishna and Arjuna represent the personal self and the more elevated self riding in the same chariot of the body, and so on. I was too dense to get that on my own. Seems I'm the same way with my own writing.

Our personality, our ego, is like a storage unit in which we keep all the things we don't want to let go of. We know that eventually we'll have to let go of everything. But right now we don't. So we keep it. Some of us are very protective of our storage units. We spend a lot of time organizing the stuff inside, reminding ourselves of what's there, defending it against those who might want to steal it, or just defending it against the unavoidable decay that all things undergo. Others of us are less protective of our stuff. But we keep it anyway and we don't really want to let it go anymore than the more protective folks do.

If you realize that you have to let go of the stuff in the storage unit that is your self, and you know you need help to do that, who would be best to call upon? Going back to my own actual concrete and metal storage unit in Durham, NC, I was very lucky to have my friend Catie help me.

Catie understood very clearly what I was going through last weekend. She has her own stuff. She doesn't care much about Ultraman and Godzilla junk. But she's a huge fan of Morrissey. She's even gone so far as traveling to England or far flung parts of the USA just to attend his concerts. The way she tells it, even waiting in line for tickets to see Morrissey is a magical experience for her. She has, in her apartment (the Lady Cave) what she calls her Shrine to Morrissey. In this shrine is a collection of memorabilia collected during those journeys. She may not understand what I see in a kids' TV superhero show from Japan. But she knows what it's like to have stuff that's important to you and that other people can't really understand the significance of. In the more metaphorical process of cleaning out the self, you need that kind of helper.

A lot of people will reject certain teachers because they believe they are flawed and therefore cannot teach them the perfection that they seek. They search, instead, for teachers who they view as pure and untainted. But what they're seeking when they look for that is someone to help them get rid of the stuff in their storage unit who cannot understand why they're keeping stuff in a storage unit at all. I'm not really sure that would be the best kind of help one could ask for.

Besides that, I think these kinds of "perfected teachers" are mostly the stuff of legend. They're mythical creatures much like the Loch Ness Monster. I use Nessie as my example because I, Brad, the guy writing this, truly wants to believe that the Loch Ness Monster is real. I want to believe that there actually is a living plesiosaurus swimming around in a lake in Scotland. Seriously. But I've looked at the evidence and none of it holds up to careful scrutiny. As much as I wish it were true, I have to admit that it's probably not.

The greatest teachers, in my estimation, are those who understand what it's like to have a storage unit of the self. Oh Jesus what a horrible clunky metaphor! But I'm gonna run with it. My teachers, Tim and Nishijima, are not ego-less "perfected masters." They are, in fact, both people with very strong egos and very clear attachments. My troll Gniz was criticizing me recently for not pointing out the flaws in my own teachers. I refrain from doing so because they're also my friends, and you don't go on the Internet and reveal the hidden flaws of your friends. That's not nice. That's also a good way to lose a friendship.

But suffice it to say, they have flaws. It's not that they have no stuff in their storage units that appeals to me and works for me. Rather it's the way they deal with the stuff they've chosen to keep in there. It's very different from the way that most people deal with it. The differences are subtle, so subtle sometimes that most people would miss them completely. But they are deep and profound. These men have discovered a way to both keep that stuff in their storage unit and not keep it at the same time. It's the kind of trick that I would have thought impossible. And I've spent years and years and years with both of them watching very carefully for signs of sleight of hand. But I've come away convinced that what I'm seeing is actually true. And because it's true it cannot be magic. It must be something that I can do too.

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi said that, in practicing Zen, you have to clean out your room. He followed up by saying that sometimes you'll bring all the stuff back into the room after you've taken it out. But, he said, you have to take it all out first. I would also add here that most people will end up throwing away a lot of things, but still taking back the most important ones. This is precisely like what you do when clearing out an actual storage unit.

If you threw everything away, you'd also throw away those things that make you most effective in helping others clean out their storage units. You'd throw away the attachment to your stuff that makes you a good sympathizer to someone who needs it.

Understand that this stuff doesn't necessarily need to be actual physical stuff. Some people have no possessions at all, yet still manage to cling very hard to their personal stuff anyhow. Sometimes the very fact that they own nothing becomes a huge thing that they own and are completely unwilling or even unable to get rid of.

Anyway, those are the thoughts on this matter that were swimming around in my head and demanding to be written down when Crum the Cat woke me up this morning. I was unable to go back to sleep, even though I seriously needed to, until I typed them out. And so now here they are for you to enjoy.

And with that, I will begin another day of getting rid of stuff. Yesterday I sold six big boxes of books, DVDs and CDs. Today I'm hoping to cut things down even more. I will not get rid of all of it. Not just yet anyway. But the time will come eventually. Do please consider making a donation to help me move the important stuff
I have to keep. I hate to say that shit and sound like a damned
televangelist. But this move is costing me a god-damned fortune no
matter how much junk I unload and my battered PT Cruiser is going to need some upkeep in order to make it out to the West Coast in one piece.

I wish, I could have met Mr. Nishijima myself. Sometimes in master and student relationships contrasts balance out each other quite well. Chaotic people search for peaceful masters, slow ones for someone who shakes them up.

Great post, Brad. This was a lot more coherent than you gave it credit for.

I'm going through a similar strip-down-and-simplify phase in my life right now, although that could be nothing more than spring cleaning being way overdue in my house. I'm discovering, as you might expect, a lot of the stuff I thought was so important simply isn't -- or, maybe better to say, the importance I attached to those things was based on attitudes I've discovered, on closer inspection, that I simply don't have anymore. But sometimes the only way you know you have changed in such a way is by putting your feet to the fire a bit.

I'm trying to get Nishijimas idea of Buddhist philosophy but I'm still struggling to understand what he means with 'materialism', the second viewpoint.

In the MNK commentaries he says (Page 4) "materialism (the philosophy that what we perceive through our Sense organs is reality" but that definition of materialism seems rather Strange to me.

Isn't materialism (Quoted from Wikipedia) : "the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter or energy; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance, and reality is identical with the actually occurring states of energy and matter."

This is what I think of as materialism and probably most people do?

So what is Nishijima meaning with Materialism? Maybe you've a better idea of his ideas than what comes from the Books and can help me understand...

In the MMK commentaries he says (Page 4) "materialism (the philosophy that what we perceive through our Sense organs is reality)" but that definition of materialism seems rather Strange to me.

How do we know matter? Why is it that we decide that matter is "out there?" Where do we get our information regarding matter from?

We see it, we feel it, we taste it, we hear it. In short, we examine the information the brain receives through the sense organs and organize that information into a theory of what's out there. But do we really know what's out there?

Ultimately materialism is the idea that the input we receive through our sense organs is reliable. We test our theory by comparing it with what others tell us about the input they receive. But we also receive this information through our sense organs.

We -- whoever or whatever we are -- receive data from sources we perceive as "outside" and sources we perceive as "inside." The stuff from outside is what the Heart Sutra calls "form." The stuff from inside is what the Heart Sutra calls emptiness. Of course there are other interpretations. But this is one crucial aspect.

The Heart Sutra posits that both what is outside and what is inside are ultimately one thing, which is neither outside nor inside.

Brad said..."How do we know matter? Why is it that we decide that matter is "out there?" Where do we get our information regarding matter from?

We see it, we feel it, we taste it, we hear it. In short, we examine the information the brain receives through the sense organs and organize that information into a theory of what's out there. But do we really know what's out there?

Sounds like you are talking about an argument made by George Berkeley against Materialism...

Brad said: "My troll Gniz was criticizing me recently for not pointing out the flaws in my own teachers."

I didn't mean that you should personally attack your own teachers and their intimate quirks and failures.

I meant that you sometimes show a disconcerting lack of cutting insight into your own sect's dogma. In other words, while you'll take a scalpel to "mindfulness" or "kensho", you won't take the same scalpel to zazen or Gudo's balancing of the ANS mumbo jumbo.

Yes these people are your friends but you have a pretty cutting way with other people's philosophies.

I was saying that you come off hypocritical and a bit biased when you only cut down people from other sects.

Like your storage room analogy, I would equate this to trying to teach science to people who don't believe in evolution. You want to do that, but you don't want to teach people about the real way the ANS works because it doesn't jive with Gudo's version (this is a poor analogy but you get my drift).

I don't think that you should spend time skewering other people's sacred cows when you won't do so to your own. That doesn't mean personally attacking your friends and teachers and I'm not sure if you misunderstood my point, or just conveniently misstated it because it's easier to do that then really look at what I was getting at.

Also, your ebook is still priced way too high, which is why the ranking dropped from 5,000 to 35,000 in a few days.

Brad - on meanings and mythology, why can't it be both, or many? Why the duality, either this or that meaning. Denseness has very little to do with it ... we all have our own ways of relating to and getting into mythology, having a lot to do with our own momentary internal states.

Btw I liked this post overall. I just disagree with how Brad characterized my criticism of him. And yes, Anon from above, people do see what they want to see.

For instance, you saw my use of the word scalpel As demeaning Brad's writIng, when in actuality it was a compliment. A scalpel is a surgical tool used to do very fine, delicate work--which I think Brad does.

My issue is with the scalpel only being applied to safe subjects like mindfulness or kensho or even enlightenment, which brad and gudo and dogen sangha have particular views on. It's not challenging for Brad to pick apart those subjects.

For hI'm to tackle zazen or the balancing of the ANS with his scalpel would be a whole different ball of wax and very shocking to his circles. Which is why he won't ever do it. At heart brad is still a pretty conservative guy in that way.

Hey anon. Maybe you are right. Brad does what he does and I do get a lot out of his writing. Maybe the parts I disagree with I should just keep to myself. Yes. I think you are correct in that assessment.

Your post was good, I bought you a cup of coffee and a doughnut. If I get a job I'll buy you half a tank.

Gniz, it's good that you can slice 'n dice the Gud's mumbo-jumbo. Nice fresh ANS-PNS salad, with little bits of zazen McCarthy-style on the side. Good job pointing out that nobody teaches the practice that is the heart of the school, they just stagger around mumbling "I encourage you to practice zazen wholeheartedly" to the walls.

That is probably why the teachers who brought the teaching West had to be impressive. They had a mouthful of marbles, and could not express the true Tao in words because Lao Tzu clearly ruled that out. Of course, the cultures that embraced Lao Tzu, Ch'an, and Zen wound up stuck in a medieval world, until the materialists demonstrated that it actually is possible to describe some subtle relationships in words that can be communicated and as a consequence manufacture heavy arms, after which these cultures raced to embrace the description of relationships for the manufacture of heavy arms.

We in the West, not seeing any need for Eastern wisdom when in fact we could overcome many of the sources of suffering through the description in words of subtle relationships of nature and when in fact we could pillage the natural resources of the countries that embraced indigenous traditions or wisdom traditions to abet our material addiction, never applied our ability to describe in words the subtle relationships of nature to the relationships at the heart of the Eastern wisdom traditions.

Now I would say a description of the practice of zazen can be made in words. This was the first thing that Dogen tried to do when he got back to Japan, and to me the high point of the civilization of China that occurred just prior to Dogen's arrival there.

Right now my description is that the pulmonary and cranial-sacral respirations cause consciousness to take place where the feeling and impact that result "...(can cause) physical anxieties to decrease, and mental anxieties to decrease, and bodily torments… and mental torments… and bodily fevers to decrease, and mental fevers to decrease... (so that such a one) experiences happiness of body and happiness of mind. (with respect to the visual sense, and each of the other five sense organs).

Not the Loch Ness monster, but very similar to balanced ANS-PNS or the heart of the practice of zazen, to me. I'm impressed that Houdini knew how to be one with the unconscious processes of the body and mind, until his balance and his breathing could be one inside that coffin. Kids, don't try this at home, and here comes the stick if you try this at the zendo.

You are an extremely intelligent individual. Rarely do I come across a blog like this.I've been doing my own website/blog lately, although it isn't nearly impressive or as deep as yours, although it does explore zen philosophies. In case you are interested: www.lightinthemadness.com

This months tricycle also features an article referencing the balancing of the ANS. It is compared to balancing active spastic activity of the mind and the quiet digestive state. Whether or not this stuff is scientifically provable it works even as a metaphor. People who get all hung up on what Nishijima "means' I think are looking for a way out of just sitting.

After all, in our culture we act as if finding one mistake in someones utterances invalidates everything else they ever said or did.

If you really sit then nothing Nishijima or anyone else says can "ruin" it for you.

Well written. Beware the teacher who claims perfection is not perfection so therefore any teaching can be perfection. Slap them in the face cuz they need it. Finding perfection in a teacher will be a truly hellish experince. Like ending up in heaven or having any other sort of dream come to reality.

However if you throw perfection, heaven or dreams out of your storage unit you will also end up in a bad way.

Brad, This goes back a few posts, but is relevant to your new book: I just finished reading 'Buddha is the Center of Gravity' by Sasaki, and no where within does the quote 'There is no God and he is your Creator' appear. What he does say, according to an anecdote in the preface by a student, is 'There is no God! But He is always with you.' So either he said the former elsewhere, or your memory transfigured the latter, or that musician guy is right and you ripped him off :p.

oem in a Straight Line - Fernando PessoaI never knew who had never been screwed up in life.Everyone I know have been champions in everything.

And I so often paltry, often pork, often vile,I often unanswerable parasite,Unexcusable dirty,I, who often have no patience even to take a bathI, who so often have been ridiculous, absurd,I wrapped the feet of carpet in publicly labels,I have been grotesque, petty, arrogant and submissive,I have suffered and insults quietAnd when I do not have been quiet, I have been even more ridiculous;I, who have been hilarious for the servants of hotel,I, I felt the eyes of guys blink of freight,I, who have made financial shame, borrowed without pay,I, that when the time's punch came, I have been crouching downOut the possibility of the punch;I, who have suffered the anguish of the silly little things,I see that I dont have a pair in it all in this world.

All the people I know and talk to meNever had a ridiculous act, never suffered insults,They were always nothing but a prince - all princes - in life ...

I wish to hear the voice of someoneWho confess not a sin, but a scandal;That counts, not the violence, but a cowardly!They are all the Ideal, that I hear and speak.Who in this wide world must confess that once was vile?Oh princes, my brothers,

Go, I'm sick of demigod!Where are people in this world?

So only I am who is vile and wrong in this land?

Women may not have been loved them,May have been betrayed - but not ridiculous!And I, I have been ridiculous and haven't been betrayed,How can I talk to my superiors without waver?I, that have been vile, vile literally,Vil in the sense of dread and petty meanness.

This is an excerpt from the Shobogenzo chapter called Butsudo, 'The Buddhist Truth':

To each individual monk who pursues real mastery in practice, I issue a stern warning: Do not retain the random names of the five sects, and do not retain any concept of lineages or customs belonging to five sects. How much less should there be “the three kinds of profundity,” “the three pivots,” “the four thoughts,” “the four relations between reflection and action,” “the nine standards,” and so on. How much less should there be “the three phrases,” “the five relative positions,”* and “the ten kinds of shared true wisdom.” The truth of Old Master Śākyamuni is not small thinking like that, and it does not esteem thinking like that as great.'

*A footnote clarifies: "Go-i, five relative positions of the absolute and the relative, expounded by Master Tōzan and modified by Master Sōzan. See also Chapter Sixty-six, Shunjū.

Sounds to me like Dogen didn't believe reality could be usefully or meaningfully divided up or analysed. But Dogen said and wrote a lot, in different contexts, for different audiences at different times and from different points of view.

As to whether Dogen used the Five Ranks throughout the Shobogenzo -

Some people, I've read, insist it's obvious that he did. Others say he didn't. Others might say that you can't avoid speaking in terms of degrees of the relative and absolute if you're talking about the truth, so he did but not 'knowingly'. Others might say you can read what he wrote any way you want to, and see all sorts of patterns of this, that and the other in it.

Brad, This goes back a few posts, but is relevant to your new book: I just finished reading 'Buddha is the Center of Gravity' by Sasaki, and no where within does the quote 'There is no God and he is your Creator' appear.

That is true. I remembered it wrong. But I'm going with the wrongly remembered version.

The 5 Ranks of Master Tozan sounds like the title of a Lau Kar-Fai film.

Truer words were never spoken.

It's been so long since I read Dogen's comments on this that I don't feel qualified to answer as to his opinion. I do remember the quote cited by Anon #108 and that sounds pretty disparaging about the system. It's also possible that Dogen contradicts himself about this subject elsewhere in his writings. He does that all the time.

My own opinion is that the systems of ranking levels of enlightenment that are in use now are ridiculous.

In Shobogenzo, Dogen quotes the old story about Bodhidharma telling his students individually, "You have my skin," "You have my flesh," "You have my bones" and "You have my marrow." Dogen said that we shouldn't see the student who was told he had Bodhidharma's marrow as somehow better than the one who was told he had his skin. Having skin is fully having skin.

It's useless to try and assign some kind of objective ranking to these things. It makes no sense at all. Is one poet objectively better than another? Was Michelangelo a better painter than Picasso? Are either of them objectively better than the painters whose paintings hang inside your local Holiday Inn Express? How do you rank things like that?

I like The Ramones much better than Yes. The Ramones speak to me while Yes, although far more technically accomplished, say nothing to me. But there are others who think just the opposite. Which of us is objectively right and which is objectively wrong?

Now if you're talking about ranks in terms of one's subjective experience in Zen, this is also ridiculous if you ask me. Your experience of this moment is fully and completely what it is.

There's a book out now called Beating Devils and Burning Their Books in which a guy spends a whole chapter tearing up Hardcore Zen. In particular it angers him that I wrote about what he believes to be an enlightenment experience but that I failed to understand the significance of that moment by letting it go.

But that experience was fully whatever it was, and this experience now of typing up an answer to someone on my blog is fully what it is. To rank one above the other seems to me to be missing the point entirely. And by "the point" I mean THE POINT of life itself. To dwell on the memory of some past experience, however enlightened that experience might have been, makes me miss what's going on at this real moment.

brad, you are in a fix, zen's not delivering too you, writing's not delivering to you and music's not delivering too you

i think you are naturally talented but you have been spread in too many directions to ever be effective !

of course this is zen in its truest sense but so is dogen's getting TB from his journey in china, one can live the truth of failure and disease but it's not actually essential and why do it if you don't have to?

it probably is actually essential, but i think the trick is to keep away from the extremes of being totally broke and chronically ill !

Brad said..."My own opinion is that the systems of ranking levels of enlightenment that are in use now are ridiculous."

Well, that is the Soto bias Brad... you belong to the school of "the first rule of Soto is that you don't talk about enlightenment... and the second rule is that you DON'T TALK about enlightenment" - so naturally anything that talks about enlightenment is going to rub you wrong.

But personally, if Dogen were alive today, I wager he would not be Soto. In fact, he would be disgusted by the Soto-shu.

I think that Dogen cannot have been completely against the 5 Ranks, because it looks like he used them.

...are both interesting reads, and I can completely see where they are coming from in the context of Dogen.Even the Wiki article on the Five Ranks says: "The work is highly significant in both the Caodong/Sōtō and Linji/Rinzai schools of Zen that exist today. Indeed, Thomas Cleary notes that Eihei Dogen, the founder of the Japanese Sōtō School, references the Five Ranks in the first paragraph of one of his most widely studied works, Genjo Koan.

Even in Taigen Dan Leighton book Dogen's Extensive Record, in the intro sombody write a lot about it (though I cant remember who atm...)...And it seems to me that the hard position that people take about Dogen and the Five Ranks must be changing significantly if serious Dogen scholar/translators like Taigen Dan Leighton are allowing those views to be stated into their works of scholarship...

How can we know whether Dogen "used" or "referenced" the Five Ranks? We can't ask him and he doesn't explicitly say so. Explicitly, he includes the Five Ranks in a list of similar attempts to define and categorize aspects of experience/reality as "small thinking, "not "the truth of Old Master Śākyamuni". So it seems safe to assume he didn't think much of the them.

On the other hand, there's nothing to stop casual readers and/or Zen experts who are keen on the Five Ranks and who do find them a useful conceptual tool finding evidence of their "use" all over the place - in the works of Dogen, the note-books of Wittgenstein, the poems of T S Eliot, at the bottom of tea-cups...

Anon#108 said...How can we know whether Dogen "used" or "referenced" the Five Ranks? We can't ask him and he doesn't explicitly say so. Explicitly, he includes the Five Ranks in a list of similar attempts to define and categorize aspects of experience/reality as "small thinking, "not "the truth of Old Master Śākyamuni". So it seems safe to assume he didn't think much of them.

But what does it mean to say they are "small thinking" in the sense of "attempts to define and categorize aspects of experience/reality", and then make use of them in his opus...?

Everyone who posits the view that Dogen used the Five Ranks in his Shobogenzo don't deny that he disparaged them verbally...

Although Dogen had some reservations about the Five Ranks, it was not because he did not find them true. He simply did not want them to become a formula—a mere intellectualization or abstraction."

Treasury of the Eye of the True DharmaGetting the Marrow by Doing Obeisance(Shôbôgenzô raihai tokuzui)IntroductionThe title of this essay is taken from a well known story, in which Bodhidharma asks four disciples to state their understanding of Buddhism. After each does so, Bodhidharma characterizes their degree of understanding. To the first, Daofu, he says, “You get my skin”; to the second, the nun Zongchi, he says, “You get my flesh”; to the third, Daoyu, he says, “You get my bones.” The fourth disciple, Huike (who will become Bodhidharma’s successor), makes no reply but instead does obeisance before Bodhidharma and is then told, “You get my copy of 'Hardcore Zen Strikes Again'.”

"How does one begin the work of storing ch'i and achieve this result? We answer that the practice of T'ai-chi ch'uan is the method of storing ch'i. With this method of circulating the ch'i, it overflows into the sinews, reaches the bone marrow, fills the diaphragm, and manifests in the skin and hair. This is truly concentrating the ch'i and developing softness." ("Master Cheng's Thirteen Chapters on T'ai-Chi Ch'uan", by Cheng Man-Ching, translated by Douglas Wile- pg 17)

Of course, T'ai Chi is considered by some to be a fantasy martial art. One wonders what Bodhidharma actually practiced at Shaolin (other than being a parasite, as Yuanwu described it).

We've all read about how the Buddha outpaced Angulimala when Angulimala tried to catch up to him, without the Buddha even breaking a trot; that would be the virtue of the style of walking that the Gautamid employed so frequently (20 miles in a day regularly), which style of walking apparently involved enough marrow that his skin and hair fairly flew, at least as far as Angulimala was concerned. Now does anyone teach how this is done, or do we assume the language can't be taught unless a person starts at the age of seven and just picks it up by instinct?

I've been a Buddhist for 51 years and a Mason for only 12 or so. There is no incompatibility between the two philosophies. The Masons don't go as deeply as Buddhism in terms of "Renunciation is a recognition that all existence is suffering."

Basically, Freemasonry is an alternative funeral cult to Roman Catholicism. It was, between the 13th and 18th centuries, a way in which wealthy and educated men could obtain a grave and avoid Catholic "Legacy Hunters***" at the same time.

Good practice is simply sitting here—it is absolutely uneventful. From the usual point of view, it's boring. Over time, however, we learn in our bodies that what we used to call “boring” is pure joy, and this joy is the source, the feeding ground, for our life and actions. Sometimes it is called samadhi; it is the very nonstate in which we should live our entire life: teaching a class, seeing a client, taking care of a baby, playing an instrument. When we live in such nondual samadhi, we have no problems because there is nothing separate from us.

Mysterion, the "fantasy" martial art label was applied by Matt Thornton, a BJJ black belt, in a lecture here.

Interesting, that addendum that Brad added on his last post, about the way the young, artistic intellectuals of Japan regard the Zen masters there. That would probably account for the popularity of Kodo Sawaki (adopted by a gambler and a prostitute after the demise of his own parents, ran away to Eihei-ji at 16!).

I attended a slide presentation by Demian Kwong at Sonoma Mountain Zen Center last Saturday, about his six months at Eihei-ji. He described being always tired, always hungry, and always cold (inside the monastery, like outside, sometimes 6 below zero?). Three hours of sleep (did I hear that right?). Being left in seiza for up to three hours, sometimes left in seiza for awhile on wooden floors.

His mom said they voted him as the most outstanding monk, or something like that. I can see why, Demian stayed positive and emerged with flying colors from the Japanese Soto Zen bootcamp.

I asked his mom when he started sitting, and she said he was hanging out in the zendo starting around 8. I'm guessing that his early start and the vigorous schedule at Sonoma Mountain are what enabled him to pull it off. Demian now has a teacher's robe, so both Demain and Shinko have been recognized as teachers in the last year.

I have to think that the fact that they voted Demian the outstanding monk maybe is the cross-cultural pollination that Shunryu Suzuki hoped to see happen when he left Japan for the U.S.A.

If someone made some good 'based-in-their-own-practice-experience' sense of the Five Ranks, or the 10 Ox Herding pics for that matter, I'm sure Dogen would have given it the thumbs up in the great Sincere Practice project... for what that's worth (not much!) I think he would have done something quite special with them if he had taken them on as a subject for commentary as he did with the 'magical powers' that were traditionally believed to result from Buddhist practice.

But more importantly, using Dogen to arrive at our own narrow opinions based on latter day sectarian cartoons more than stinks. Sure, the D-dawg criticized 'kill your intellect' style of using koans, but then he also criticized the sort of dead-headed sitting-around-dozing that passes itself off as 'Soto Zen' in some quarters.

Dogen was using the Buddhist teachings and his personal gifts creatively; Shobogenzo was not intended as a dour set-in-stone creed for some sort of crap zazen-only club.

what you get is just the brain churning and digging itself in a deepr rut

Uhuh Andrew there's some deep resistance in you towards the present moment, towards your life. Of course it's the brain working, what else should be? But does it matter? Why not practice your brain towards opening to life by sitting and just being with what is? Instead of spacing out all the time in your fantasies about Brad and this blog? Just be there and really feel what's going on, physically. And notice those thoughts. Label them. You might think "Joko is being bossy today"...or "ah that's of no value" but Andrew, these are just thoughts. Label them like "bossy again" or "no value" and start seing them for what they are. Then you can find true joy in your life and no longer have to talk to ghosts on Brad's blog in his comments section.

Otherwise you just might continue to create Merry Mayhem for you and others...

Dear Brad,By the time you get this you will be long gone to the other shore of your new blogsite. Just a note to say I hear you about all of the nasty rat bastards that think they know the true way to Nirvana. I certainly don't. I stopped looking a while back and am enjoying zazen and, too touch briefly on another subject you brought up, I have reconnected with my Roshi who has a coninuing plethora of humanity going on all of the time. I love him dearly for his patience with my humanity. My best mate of over 23 years has a very different belief system than mine, yet we have been through hellfire and highwater numerous timesa and when the dharma is down (sorry, couldn't resist)I know he has my back. People's encoutner in the world is wierd and I can only paraphrase the Tao te ching, "observe the turmoil of beings, but contemplate their return to thusness."Enjoy the new site, I may see you there.

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